Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Conspiracist Filmmaker, Family Found Dead In Murder-Suicide, Spurring Fresh Theories

A Minnesota man who had been making an independent feature film
depicting the coming imposition of a “New World Order” dictatorship in
America was found dead with his family over the weekend. Police
investigating the scene told reporters that the case appeared to be a
murder-suicide, but the man’s conspiracist supporters have been claiming
instead that he was murdered by the government.

David T. Crowley, 29, was found dead,
along with his wife Komel, 28, and daughter Rani, 5, in their suburban
Apple Valley home south of Minneapolis by a neighbor checking on the
home. Investigators said it appeared that the bodies had been there for
several weeks – probably since before Christmas – and deemed it a
probable murder-suicide, with Crowley the apparent perpetrator.

However, in the conspiracy-theory industry in which Crowley operated
his home-based filmmaking business, the deaths were immediately assumed
to be assassinations carried out by nefarious “New World Order” agents.

At Alex Jones’ InfoWars site, the
news story reporting on the deaths described the “suspicious
circumstances surrounding the deaths,” namely, “the controversial
nature of Crowley’s latest project, entitled Gray State, a
highly-anticipated independent film envisioning a brutal police state,
martial law crackdown, complete with biometric identification, a
ubiquitous surveillance state and FEMA stormtroopers rounding dissidents
up into camps.”

Indeed, a look at the trailer that Crowley had created for Gray State
reveals it to be an attempt to mount on film nearly every fever-dream
conspiracy theory about the New World Order of the past ten years:

Crowley successfully raised over $60,000 in 2012 in an Indiegogo campaign to
make the film, and a number of scenes were filmed on sets with
professional actors. These included scenes involving roundups and
executions of American citizens, home surveillance, and forcing children
to have chips implanted in their bodies.

In one Facebook photo
posted in January 2014, Crowley can be seen conferring with Oath
Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and far-right pastor Chuck Baldwin, among
others. Another Facebook photo meme lionizes “III Percent” movement founder Mike Vanderboegh. Posted in late November, that was one of Crowley’s last posts.

His neighbors told KARE-TV
that they had not seen Crowley for several weeks, and finally grew
suspicious as packages began to pile up on the family’s doorstep.

The neighbor who found the bodies told reporters that he remembered
awakening one night in December to what sounded like gunshots, but then
they stopped and he thought nothing more of it until checking on the
Crowleys’ home. He said a dog had been apparently inside with the
bodies.

Crowley was an Army veteran who had served in Iraq. At his LinkedIn
profile, he explained: “After five years I had enough and left to pursue
filmmaking.”

Crowley’s wife was a dietitian who ran a business called Mind Body Dietitian.
She and her daughter Rani can be seen in a video that Crowley shot to
promote a “documentary” he also planned in support of his feature film,
to be titled Gray State: The Rise. The video shows him at home devising lighting for specific shots he had planned.

At the Facebook page for Gray State: The Rise,
the person overseeing the site posted a notice about the deaths,
saying: “Gray State founder, director and screenwriter David Crowley and
his family have passed away. Please pray for their families and friends
of which they had many.

“We will try and keep you all posted, but this page will go dark for awhile as the future of Gray State is uncertain.”

Stewart Rhodes chimed in,
saying: “I was honored to know David, to see him work, and to help, in a
small way, with this project. This is a great and tragic loss, and
comes as such a shock.”

Crowley directing 'Gray State' on the set

Elsewhere, he added:
“As others have already said, Gray State the movie needs to be made. I
hope Mitch and others involved will see it finished, as a tribute to
David and his family, and to complete his mission. Such a movie would be
immensely powerful, and a potential game changer, which is why we are
all so suspicious that there was external foul play involved in this
tragedy. If the project is carried on, I pledge all assistance possible
from Oath Keepers to see it made.”

Rhodes’ notes of suspicion were among some of the more restrained
comments coming from the ranks of Crowley’s conspiracist cohort. One site’s headline on the case asked: “Who really murdered them?”

Commenters at the Gray State Facebook page were far more certain that
the family had been “suicided” – a term popular with conspiracy
theorists who believe that nefarious New World Order assassins
frequently kill the people who try to expose them by staging their
deaths and making it appear to be suicide.

“The Creator of Gray State was killed by our Gov't... watch the Concept trailer,” wrote one.
“This will shine some light on what this movie was about and will have
you know why he was murdered by our Gov't. Everyone knows except those
who haven't seen this yet.”

“Saddened to [hear] that making a film is what it takes for the feds to come and murder your whole family!” wrote another.

“DEMAND JUSTICE FOR DAVID CROWLEY! We must not allow his good name to
be soiled. He did not kill anyone, this was an assassination!” wrote
one poster who was especially persistent in pursuing this claim. In
another post, he wrote: “DAVID CROWLEY WAS ASSASSINATED!! No doubts. He
is not part of a psyop but a real person, one of the major players
behind exposing the horror of the upcoming police state.”

He then apparently set up a Facebook page
dedicated to the concept. “David Crowley and his family were murdered
by those who want to shut down the Gray State project,” it says. “Help
expose what really happened and demand justice.”

One of his admirers posted a video of Crowley speaking at a “Ron Paul Festival” held in Tampa, Fla., in 2012, while he was raising funds for the film:

“This man did NOT kill himself. He was SUICIDED,” wrote the post’s author.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.